Howdy folks! Those of you that have been paying attention despite my constant attempts at boring you to death may have noticed that I've been 17 for roughly a year. This train of thought would eventually lead to the conclusion that I'd have to turn 18 sometime soon. Rather than keep you all wondering, I might as well just admit it: I'm finally 18!

In addition to me just wanting to brag about having survived another trip around the sun, I might as well bring everybody up to date. College has, oddly enough, been time-consuming! Nevertheless, I've managed to get a little work done on EV-related projects every now and then. I've been doing quite a bit of electronics work, and have succeeded in getting a few gadgets up and running with varying degrees of success. I've built a few motor controllers of various types on the small scale, digital voltage gauges, and a few other non-ev-related items that I am equally unrightfully proud of- digital clocks, stepper motor controllers, that kind of thing.

Anyway, right now my main focus is on the motor controller side of things. Mainly, I'm working on scaling up a motor controller that can handle 6A to something that can handle 600A. I'm probably going to be building either a single- or double- IGBT controller, to save space and boost efficiency. The main goals of the project are to keep size, weight, and of course, cost to a minimum while maintaining capabilities suitable for road-going vehicles.

One of the coolest things about a project like this is that it allows you to do something about everything you didn't like about the production stuff you used before. For instance, the throttle sensors used by most modern controllers really suck. Even my Raptor, which is supposed to have auto-sensing capabilities for throttle positions, requires a lot of tinkering to get it working to its full potential. My controller will have a programming mode that requires some setup beforehand, but can be calibrated to just about any throttle setup.

Well, that's about it for now. As always, I'm going to try to keep everybody a little more up to date, but as we've seen in the past that doesn't always work out as planned. Nevertheless, some pretty big developments might be coming out of the GreenflightEV lab (aka "the dorm room") in the next couple months, so stay tuned!

I bring you Jay Ingram's book, The Daily Planet Book of Cool Ideas. Yeah, I know right, nice book. But the best part of the book is, of course, pages 258-261. Those are the pages that feature my truck! After Discovery Channel Canada's interviews, the book picked up the story, and a few months later, voila- I'm in a book. So yeah, if anyone's interested, it is now available in the US from Amazon.com.

Hey everybody, as usual, it's been a while! Sorry for the wait. It's great to read all the comments though, so keep 'em comin! Anyway, a couple weekends ago I finally got to go home for a few days, so I got to do a little work on my truck.

What with school and everything, I never really got to talk about what happened at this year's Woodward Dream Cruise. As usual, the cruise was awesome and everybody had a great time. I spent a little while at a car show with a couple other EVs. Awesome to see the interest.

Of course my new underbody lights were a big hit, as was the, umm, "extra torque" I got from my 144v upgrade. Anyway bottom line, right as the cruise was drawing to a close I pulled out the left motor mount. Turns out it was the factory rubber mount that broke- of course I'm proud of the fact that my homemade mount stayed intact!

So, over the weekend I replaced the motor mount, installed a new shifter (the old one was damaged when the mount broke loose), and enjoyed a couple days of driving around aimlessly. It's funny, after not driving for a couple months you really start to miss it. Not a bad weekend, all things considered.

Apparently, since I fixed my truck, my parents have taken a bit of a liking to it. As much as it goes against my intuition to let my parents drive my truck, I'm glad it's seeing some use. Good for the batteries, and of course it's still a money saver. Just wait till next year when I get a parking permit...

For those of you who are wondering, school is going pretty good, it's a big adjustment but I'm having a lot of fun.

Anyway- I've got a post that should be coming right after this one, assuming my computer doesn't crash or something. It's big enough that I figure it deserves its own post.

Well, this is the first blog post while living at Purdue University. That's right, after all this time, I'm finally at college. Anyway, I'm writing this from my dorm room after taking a bus ride to the store to get some parts for my homemade air conditioner (yeah, it's plenty hot in my dorm room).

So- the upshot is, I've finally learned how much hate buses. Yes, the electric car guy hates a form of public transportation. Now, before you all pile into the family hybrid with baseball bats and come to Indiana, let me explain myself in what I like to call, "10 reasons why I hate buses."

1. You're tied down to their schedule, which is, of course, really eratic. If the bus is late, so are you.
2. You're packed in there like a bunch of overgrown sardines.
3. You get lots of dirty looks if you get on carrying two huge styrofoam coolers, copper pipe, bilge pumps, and other commonplace items.
4. The bus drivers definitely don't believe in brake preservation.
5. It's a terrible place to meet girls. I don't care what you've seen on TV, it just doesn't happen that way.
6. You've got to be some kind of freak of nature to understand the labyrinth of 1As, 3Bs, reds, greens, blues, and whatever that make up the system.
7. The bus routes are just as nuts as the maps that describe them.
8. If you're one of those "it's the journey, not the destination" people, you might as well just give up.
9. Bus drivers are jerks. (OK, not all of them- probably just the one or two that I've dealt with)
10. See rule #1.

That pretty much concludes this rant. Stay tuned for more on this and other fascinating topics!

You know you're famous when...

My truck has officially reached the highest level of notoriety: the local Starbucks chalkboard.

This weekend's project: the proverbial black box.

And no, I'm not going to tell you what it does or what's inside.

The latest errr 'improvements'

Yeah, I know, underbody lights on a rusty old truck... but they really do look cool! I spent the better part of this saturday installing these things.

While I had the truck up in the air, I decided it would be a good time to add that swaybar that's been sitting around the garage. So, in addition to looking cool, my truck also handles remotely better. Not a bad weekend.

Anyway I've been working on a little bit of everything lately so I'll try to keep the updates coming!

And the verdict is...

Success! I rolled into the driveway with juice to spare, and I even stopped at Starbucks on the way. According to my trip odometer, my truck has seen almost exactly 70 miles today, almost all of it in 55 mph zones. No trouble there... Talk about a money saver!

Later folks... This is a very pleased EV driver, signing off.

Fun drive to work...

Well, so far so good. I got to work without any problems and plenty of charge left. Having never driven my truck in heavy traffic, I was impressed how well it kept up. And now: will I make it back home??

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Range test results

I did an informal range test on my truck yesterday. The official test track consisted of several miles of open, 55 mph road, and several miles of slower stop-and-go driving.

The results (drumroll please)? A very comfortable 45 mile range over a period of about an hour and 10 minutes, with the truck still comfortably maintaining 55 mph when I pulled in the driveway.

I was, needless to say, quite pleased.

Next up: The 70 mile roundtrip commute to my summer job, in rush hour traffic. I hope to undertake this expedition tomorrow morning, and I should have the results sometime tomorrow afternoon. I'm excited. Stay tuned!

Breaking news!

Well, not quite, but whatever. My latest "media event:" ABC came over and did a feature story for today's news. I didn't get to see it, but reports indicate that it turned out well, and the transcript looks good. Not a bad day!

Stay tuned for more after these very important messages!

144v upgrade

Here's a pic of the 144v upgrade on my truck. I added four more batteries above the motor. The other four that were already in the engine compartment kept their original position. The component board was turned on edge and mounted against the firewall, and the charger and vacuum system were scattered all over the place to make room. Everything else stayed exactly the same.

Up and running

Wow, I'm quite the procrastinator... I'll try to post updates a little more often now that I have (slightly) more time!

Anyway, here's the big news: the Tercel is up and running! I've had it on the road for a few weeks now and I love it. Lemme tell you, this thing is FAST! It has no trouble breaking the tires loose in 2nd gear, and I have yet to reach the top speed (so far I've had it up to around 70). 2nd gear is fine all the way up to redline at 55.

I do have to say range isn't so great (so far it's about 20-25 miles), but I guess that's what I get for building a car with cheap marine batteries and a huge motor.

In other news, I've just finished upgrading my truck to 144 volts, which seems to have helped out a little bit in terms of speed and acceleration. I'll probably do a range test sometime this weekend, and I'm optimistic in my expectations. Anyway, more on the later.

Oh yeah, happy Independance Day everybody!

Instrumentation... it's a good thing

Here's the gauges mounted in the cluster. It actually worked out pretty good. The isolated power supplies are mounted on the back, and there's a nine pin D connector wired up for easy IP removal. Not to mention they look really cool with the blue backlight... I'll add more pics next time I power them up.

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More wiring... it never ends!

This morning's project: making up battery cables. These are the cables for the rear 120 volt pack. Most positive and most negative connections are at the top (front) center of the pack, and the circuit breaker is at the bottom. This way, when I throw the breaker, it essentially cuts the pack in half. When the breaker is thrown, no more than 60 volts will be present across any two terminals.

Living the EV dream!

Just a quick post to brag about how much I love my truck.

Getting closer...

I'm getting close to getting my car rolling... just working on putting together all the little bits and pieces. This is the vacuum canister for the brake system. It's made of 3" dia. white PVC, 22" long. It will be mounted right behind the bumper, in front of the batteries, so I won't be missing the space.

Here's the rear batteries temporarily set in place. They fit surprisingly well.

I picked up the batteries this morning. 14 marine deep cycle 12v batteries. As always, this is one of the more exciting parts of the project! Now I just have to put my car back together and wait for my gauges to show up...

Wiring... and lots of it!

Today's project (and probably the rest of the week, for that matter!) was straightening up some of the dash wiring and removing all of the unnecessary engine wiring. Well I'm at it I'm going to run the gauge wiring through the original harness. Tedious at best, but it will definitely look nice and make the car easier to service. Not to mention, it can be kind of fun once you get the hang of it.